Guardians of the Galaxy is aiming to be Marvel’s coolest video game starring a bunch of A-holes

One of the biggest surprises of E3’s second day was easily the reveal of a Guardians of the Galaxy game at the Square Enix Presents showcase, which looked nothing like the publisher’s infamously-empty Marvel’s Avengers. Whereas that game starring Marvel’s A-team felt like it was checking boxes on a live to-do list, Guardians of the Galaxy is hitting PC and consoles later this year as a dedicated single-player game.

Here’s what it looks like in action:

Not bad! Guardians of the Galaxy is clearly pulling inspiration from both the comic books and cinematic incarnations of the Guardians, using the core team of Star Lord, Drax, Gamora, Groot, and Rocket that everyone is most familiar with. You’ll of course be stepping into the hover-boots of Peter Quill, as he and his gang of legally-sanctioned heroes for hire get up to stuff in the far reaches of the galaxy.

“We want this to be a dynamic, fast-paced, really a superhero experience on the sticks,” said Eidos Montreal senior producer Olivier Proulx to GameSpot.

You’re playing with Peter, but you have all these other Guardians that are around you, so there’s a tactical element to it. For us, the challenge was to blend both. We didn’t want to have an RPG or where it’s super tactical like a Mass Effect, or we didn’t want you to sort of swap from one character to the next because that broke the feel of playing the whole team at the same time. So the feel that you have, it’s like solo team play, but very dynamic and very fast-paced.

According to Proulx, Star Lord is “super cool to play” as, and he’ll be able to switch elements on his blasters while using his team to launch varying attacks for him. By combining abilities, players can come up with cool strategies on the fly as they stagger enemies and move in for the kill. For example, Drax and Gamora are handy damage-dealers, Groot can heal party members, and Rocket is perfect for laying down area of effect attacks.

“They all have their specialties and then you can just trigger them with the left bumper, and they have their own abilities on the face button. It becomes kind of second nature to be controlling Peter really quick and then just launch those Guardian abilities and do combos with them,” Proulx explained.

It’s still too early to tell if Guardians of the Galaxy will lean closer to the mark of quality that Insomniac created with its benchmark Spider-Man titles or if it’ll join Marvel’s Avengers over in the infamy side of video game history, but I’m liking what I’m seeing so far: Plenty of banter, colourful visuals, and some fun gameplay to chew on. Guardians of the Galaxy will be out on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S on October 26.

Last Updated: June 14, 2021